RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewFerocious ... It is in Iglesias’ stark, authoritative, sometimes surprisingly beautiful descriptions of the grit and pessimism of urban Puerto Rico that his prose turns electric.
Richard Mirabella
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewAn eerie, psychologically devastating novel by any measure, but it’s Mirabella’s careful, emotionally honest rendering of the ever-shifting relationship between older brother, Justin, and younger sister, Willa, that marks this book as a revelation ... Mirabella shuns comforting dramatic resolutions and predictable redemptive plot turns. Instead, we are thrown into a more emotional narrative flow ... Despite the action verb in the book title, this brother and sister are fascinatingly, and often frustratingly, inert. They continually fail to start projects, unpack boxes, clean up messes, run from danger or text others back. Such stasis, though, proves a brilliant contrast for the times when Mirabella does shake up their world.
Dwyer Murphy
RaveNew York Times Book Review\"Like the best noir practitioners, Murphy uses the mystery as scaffolding to assemble a world of fallen dreams and doom-bitten characters ... Murphy’s hard-boiled rendering of the city is nothing short of exquisite. It’s a landscape of reeking garbage, of salty rain sweeping off the ocean, of Midtown towers that look \'ghostly like a mountain range,\' ... For anyone who wants a portrait of this New York, few recent books have conjured it so vividly. For those who demand a straightforward mystery without any humor, romance and ambience, well, forget it, Jake, it’s literature.\
Bethan Roberts
RaveThe New York Times Book Review... stunning ... Roberts’s lachrymose gay novel is nine years overdue in becoming a sensation here ... It’s a story as old as time, but, to my mind, it’s never been told so effectively, principally because Roberts invests us emotionally in both sides of the tug-of-war ... Tom, the object of desire, remains a cipher throughout. But Marion and Patrick come alive in their respective sections, serving as complicated, convincing and, at times, justifiably petty protagonists. Roberts is terrific at sensory details ... The novel’s real achievement lies in how Roberts recodes the stereotypical desires of a straight, provincial woman and a fey, posh, gay man ... It’s not a happy story. It’s better than that, fraught and honest.
Elon Green
PositiveThe New York TimesLast Call is Green’s first book, and it admirably demonstrates his commitment to sidestepping easy sensationalism for the far grittier work of checking sources, poring over police reports and reinterviewing witnesses ... Instead of focusing on the killer, Green opts to humanize his victims ... With great compassion, he widens his scope to explore the social value of gay bars to the queer community and the vital work of grass-roots groups ... Green proves a conscientious crime writer. He provides an adrenalized police-procedural plot without ever losing sight of the fact that these were innocent human beings who were duped, butchered and discarded. We are never allowed a moment of perverse awe for the murderer. Ultimately, that strength is also the book’s weakness ... Green acknowledges that Rogers, who is serving two consecutive life terms in prison, declined his attempts to interview him. That missing confrontation creates a fissure in his otherwise impressive reporting ... More than once in the abrupt final chapters, in the midst of reading about him, I forgot the murderer’s name. But it is to Green’s credit that I never forgot the names of the four known victims.
Benjamin Moser
RaveInterviewMoser has managed the near-impossible feat of capturing Sontag in all of her dark brilliance and pointed contradictions ... with his immense research and intensive interviews with friends, adversaries, lovers, and living witnesses, Moser has managed to create a high-definition portrait not only of Sontag the stylish, cerebral New York icon, but also Sontag the blinking, blood-and-bone human.
